Dan Dan Noodles
Difficulty Level Easy
I've been making a Chinese beef and noodle dish for my family for years. It's extremely quick and easy and everybody loved it, so it was always my fallback dish if I was in a hurry or lacking in inspiration. You cooked the ground beef and added a bit of soy sauce and a pinch of sugar, then you put the sauce ingredients in the base of individual serving bowls, which allowed the adult's dinner to be spicier than the kids. Then you put the noodles over the sauce, topping it with the ground beef and let everyone stir it up for themselves. Add a green vegetable and you've got a nice little dinner.
So I was checking out my copy of Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty and reading the section on street food, when my lit upon the phrase "These noodles are not for the fainthearted—they are shamelessly spicy" and I thought, that's a dish for us. My husband was very excited to hear that we were having Chinese street food for dinner, until I place the bowl in front of him. All he could say, dejectedly, was "This is Chinese beef," and indeed it was. It was very good, and certainly more sophisticated than our regular Chinese beef, but not as spicy as I thought it would be. I didn't have any chili oil, so maybe that was the difference. I think when I try it again I'll up the spice factor and add more peppercorns and see if that works.
As an aside, for anyone interested in Chinese cooking, or in food or travel memoirs, I highly recommend Ms. Dunlop's fascinating Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: a Sweet and Sour Memoir of Eating in China. It's beautifully written and it charts her path from slightly reticent eater to voracious eater, to the realization that there is a huge environmental cost to the food choices that we make.
INGREDIENTS
| 1 lb | of fresh Chinese noodles |
| or 12 ounces | dried Chinese noodles |
| For the meat topping: | |
| 1 tbsp | peanut oil |
| 3 | Sichuanese dried chilies, snipped in half, seeds discarded |
| 1/2 tsp | whole Sichuan pepper |
| 2 tbsp | Chinese preserved vegetable (I used preserved Tamarind leaves) |
| 4 ounces | ground beef |
| 2 tsp | light soy sauce |
| salt to taste | |
| For the Sauce | |
| 1/2 ‑ 1 tsp | ground roasted Sichuan pepper |
| 1/4 tsp | salt |
| 4 tsp | sesame paste |
| 1 tbsp | light soy sauce |
| 1 tbsp | dark soy sauce |
| 2 tbsp | chili oil with chili flakes |
PREPARATION:
- Heat 1 tablespoon of peanut oil in a wok over a moderate flame. When the oil is hot but not yet smoking, add the chilies and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry briefly until the oil is spicy and fragrant Take care not to burn the spices. Add the preserved vegetable and continue to stir-fry until hot and fragrant. Add the meat, splash in the soy sauce, and stir-fry until the meat is brown and a little crispy, but not too dry. Season with salt to taste. When the meat is cooked remove the mixture from the wok and set aside.
- Put the sauce ingredients in a serving bowl and mix together.
- Cook the noodles according to the instrucitons on the package. Drain them and add them to the sauce in the serving bowl. Sprinkle with the meat mixture and serve immediately. Stir the noodles through the sauce as you eat them.
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